Vigorously resists grace
by pondglorious
Summary: Post 1x11. Alana goes to Will's house to check up on him after he leaves the hospital. Starts with fluff, turns to angst halfway through.


Alana still hears the fatal gunshot ringing through her ears as she cuts through the night with her car, and it's hard not to relive the scenario over and over again until it's drilled into her skull, replaying like a tape on loop. Snow lines the road, making it almost impossible to drive, but she does anyway, deliberate, determined.

His house is quiet when she drives up. She marvels at the peacefulness and hopes he feels it too, the warmth and calmness of his little lonely home. Maybe it'll do some good to be back in his own environment, his own bed, his dogs all around him, instead of in the hard bed of the hospital, an IV stuck up his arm, the harsh lights shining down relentlessly on him.

She walks up his steps in a purposeful stride, like she knows what she's doing, knows why she's here, though she has no idea. She has her excuses lined up, though; she'll always need them, for her sake more than anyone else's.

She knocks on the door lightly, once. He opens up right away, like he was expecting her, clad in flannel pajamas and a clean white t-shirt. He's disoriented for a minute before muttering a shy greeting. "Hi." She says casually. There's a strange air between them. Hesitant, fearful. Like saying the wrong thing would erupt in an explosion.

"Um- come in, please, come in." He says, and there's both an eagerness and hesitancy in his voice.

He watches as she strides past him into the house. "Not to be rude, but...what are you doing here?"

"I went to the hospital to check on you, but they said you'd checked out this morning." He nods. "I was worried about you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay." There was an apology and a thousand words of gratitude hanging between her lips, but she kept them closed- it needed to be spoken, but somehow it wasn't the right time. Not when there was already enough tension between them to last and last as long as the relationship would.

"Oh." He says, as if just remembering the events of the past few days. "Yeah, I'm_ okay._"

She sighs at his answer, for they both know it's not true.

"Hope I'm not intruding."

She was. She was intruding his self-implemented seclusion, but he wasn't about to tell her that. "You could never intrude. I- I want you to intrude. I told you before, you don't need an excuse to-"

"Yes, well, it's always good to have one anyway. Prevents more guilt later."

He stares for a moment, saying nothing in reply to her odd comment, and then walks over to the kitchen counter, where an empty mug stood next to a box overflowing with tea bags.

"Tea?" He asks her, pulling another mug out of the cabinet.

"Coffee." She replies, plopping down comfortably on his couch.

She's thankful for the excuse to stay; she had been lingering awkwardly in the middle of his living room, not knowing what to say or if she should stay or go, not entirely sure why she came in the first place.

She watches from afar as his unsteady hands tip a full bag full of ground coffee beans into the filter, as he puts water in the reservoir and turns the machine on.

It's hard not to analyze something as simple as his coffee-making, at least for her. She notes he doesn't even use a spoon for the coffee beans; probably has no patience for it. Probably doesn't have patience for a professional coffee machine either, instead sticking with the simple filter. She imagines him in the morning when Jack's called with another exhausting case for him to go through, when his time and his alertness is limited and he never bothers with the spoon, and he puts tap water in the reservoir and shuts the lid, putting the pot on a hot plate and turning it on. He'll know when it's done when the water stops travelling through the machine and steam stops rising from the top. He'll shake his pill bottle and spill them into his hand on the way out, downing them with the bitter taste the rushed coffee in the car, and the taste of it would still be lingering in his mouth and on his breath when he steps into the killer's shoes. Just another day on the job.

That was the problem. She wanted to know every part of his strange mind and all the cogs clicking inside it, wanted to analyze his fascinating abilities and habits, and often times it was hard to resist. But she also wanted to know _him_, the soul separate from the mind, the man who walked the flat fields by night and sheltered strays and lined up his fishing rods like trophies.

She snaps out of her daze when he lets the dogs in and they all trot over and surround her, each eagerly awaiting attention. Alana does a head count as they file in, seemingly endlessly. Seven. There were seven of them. She'd always liked dogs, but evidently not as much as Will- and she's suddenly saddened by the thought that they're all he has for company out here at his tiny, isolated home.

"Glad I don't have your vet bill." She says jokingly.

He clamors around in the kitchen some more as the coffee boils, and she takes up the absence of his presence to snoop around his living room.

She'd never had enough time the few visits she'd made here to explore. His fishing rods were by the front door, a little table and magnifying glass set up beside them to work on the lures. His heavy coat hung up on a rack, his boots covered in snow on the floor beneath it.

She saw a tiny bookcase in the corner and went to run her hands along the spines of the various old books that lines the shelves. Most of them were criminology books, just as her bookcase at home was stuffed to the point of overflowing with psychology books, little room for the literature in which were her personal favorites. Many were untouched and collecting dust, like he'd bought them and kept them in mint condition because he didn't have the time or energy for the simple joy of reading, which, she reminded herself, was most likely true (_damn it, stop analyzing everything_, she thinks). But crammed in the deepest corner of the shelf she found some fishing books, as well as some ratty old copies that he must've had for a long while; the covers were tattered and discolored and the spines bent brutally. She recognizes most of them straight away, for almost all were classics, and she names the authors aloud, catching his attention from the kitchen.

"Camus. Hemingway. Salinger. Shakespeare. Plath. Kafka." She paused, shaking her head. "So you complain about the job getting to your head all day, and then you come home and read Plath and Kafka?" Her voice was tilting in amusement.

He walks over from the kitchen, setting two steaming mugs down on the coffee table. She couldn't have known how reassuring it was that they could still joke like that, that she didn't try to tiptoe around his problems like everyone else. That despite the fact that they were now seeped too deep in tradgedy, they could still enjoy a small piece of lightheartedness.

"The Bell Jar really freaked me out." He says, falling lazily onto the couch.

"I can only imagine."

"You should've guessed the broken guy reads those angsty authors, anyways." He teases.

She doesn't answer him, and it takes all the will power she has not to blurt out _you're not broken_ again, like repeating it over and over would somehow make it ring true. If she had said it, he'd have wondered why she bothers with it anymore, in light of recent events.

She continues off in her listings. "Orwell. O'connor." She stops at the last one, and picks the book gingerly off the shelf. "_A Good Man is Hard to Find."_

He hesitates for a moment. "I saw you reading it to Abigail in the hospital. I was...intrigued."

"Oh." She mutters, and suddenly feels guilty, processing the context of the short story. Now she's accidentally brought the horrors of his job back home with him. She walks back over the couch then, settling on the couch next to him, book still in hand. She sips the coffee and notes that it has no milk or sugar, that it's just plain black and bitter; she loves it.

"I liked the way it sounded when you read it. It was...slow. Peaceful, calming."

She gulps. "The story isn't exactly the most peaceful."

He chuckles. "No, it isn't. But you make it that way, somehow. Maybe it's your voice." He opens his mouth like he wants to say more, like he's already said too much.

"I haven't had the chance to finish it yet, though." He says quietly, staring almost mourningly down at his coffee. And then, looking timidly up at her, "Would you...mind reading it to me?"

It would sound so much better in your voice instead of the one inside my head, he thought.

"What?" She says, though she heard perfectly clearly what he requested of her.

"Please." He begs.

She sighs, drawn out and heaving. After a moment she begins. _"The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind..."_

Her voice washes over him in intervals of small waves, and he realizes the extent of his tiredness; he hadn't slept well, almost not at all, while he was in the hospital; but he knew when he fell asleep Alana would come again, her hand resting on his lightly, and he could feel the touch through the dragging depths of even his darkest dreams. He figured the simple gesture was even too far for her to go when he was awake; but when he was asleep, well, that was a different story. She let her guard down and stared at him in fear, in sorrow, in worry. But she never pitied him the way the others did. She pitied the part of him he loathed, and longed to fix it. But the others pitied him as a whole, they pitied him to the point of dehumanizing him, like he was all some sad, helpless creature worthy of all their pathetic brand of it.

Her voice came over his sleepiness in crystal clear waves again, reading the words, _"'A good man is hard to find,' Red Sammy said. 'Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more...'"_

It was strange to him, to have a moment like this after all the insanity of the past months. Even the night they kissed had been riddled with it; but right now was perfect, with the dogs around them and mugs balancing on their knees and her eyes trained on the book and her mouth moving to form the words as he stared.

He thought he didn't deserve a moment of peace such as the one he was receiving, for it was all just going to fall apart again on his own accord, and the collapse would be horrid, virulent, even more so than the one a few nights ago.

They were dominos, all of them, and the fall was inevitable.

Her voice snakes in between his thoughts, breaking them. _"'Yes'm,' the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, 'but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me.'"_

He could feel it, the chain reaction that started with Garrett Jacob Hobbs, and the chain hasn't ended. Far from it.

_"The Misfit kept scratching in the ground with the butt of his gun as if he were thinking about it. 'Yestm, somebody is always after you,' he murmured.'"_

He hated thinking about all this now, when he could be savoring a sweet moment of peace. So he willed himself to sleep, and he could still hear her words as he drifted into blissful oblivion:

"_'Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life.'"_

...

He wakes up in an awkward position on the couch, and Alana is gone. Suddenly he panics, and ponders if she was ever there at all. And if she wasn't...that means he was slipping even further into his hallucinations. And that terrified him.

He hears a whimpering drifting up from somewhere near the floor, and assumes it's one of the dogs- but when he looks down, Abigail is there, her gangly body sprawled out on the floor, blood dripping everywhere- and it's like he's back in her kitchen all over again, on that day, the worst day of his life.

He jolts up and leans over her on the floor. He feels just as desperate as he had when the blood was flooding from Abigail's throat on the day it really was, because it was happening again. His hands were _so_ slippery and drenched in her blood, warm and coppery-smelling. He can't keep his grip firm around her neck to stop the bleeding as she convulses and gasps for breath from under him, and all he can do is whisper, "no, no, no, no.". All there was in the world was this compelling stranger and all the blood escaping her body, and all the life leaving her eyes. The only color in the world was red, as it stained her clothes and his, stained the floor, splattered his face, clouded his glasses. Her breaths were coming out frantic and strained and fading. There was no Hannibal to come to their rescue and hold her neck for him. There was no Alana to ground him in reality. It was all him alone in the world with this poor helpless girl, and he can't think, he can't breathe; it was the most helpless he'd ever felt in his life.

Suddenly, Abigail rises up from the floor, and the blood stain is gone from the beneath her, but the slash is still at her neck. He follows as she walks briskly to the front door and out into the yard.

But when he walks out, he's not in the yard- she's lead him directly through the door and into her father's cabin in Minnesota, where the antlers were all reaching out to scratch him with their razor sharp claws wherever he turned.

Every body of Garrett Jacob Hobbs' victims are there, as well as the Chesapeake Rippers'. They were all lined up and shoved into the sharp edges of the antlers, piercing their bodies as blood rained down from them.

He panics when Alana is there too, among the gruesomely torn victims, her body just as damaged. She's splayed on the antlers like it's a crucifiction, a ritual sacrifice, her skin luminous in the moonlight and the blood stark against its transparency, her body on display.

Somehow, inexplicably he knows it's his fault that she's there, that he was the one that dragged a knife across her skin, that he was the one who impaled her into the antlers and stopped her breath, stopped her heart that beat for him even as she looked into his eyes in her last moments, the eyes of a true monster.

But it didn't feel ugly, like it had with Garrett Jacob Hobbs. She was beautiful as her body lay limp and still and pale on the rough edges of the spikes of the stag head, and that was what it felt like; beautiful. It was beautiful that he had this power of her, the power of life and death. It was beautiful as he held it in his hands, her being, her ending. Like ending her was protecting her and loving her and honoring her the way he couldn't when she was living and he was dying inside.

Everything about the bodies were screaming at him; the bloodstains, the cuts and stabs, the torn skin, the delectable-looking flesh. They were all beckoning him in a silent whisper.

Abigail is still standing there calmly among all the peaceful chaos, and suddenly the stag is there, creeping out from behind her and standing almost protectively next to her.

"See?" Hisses Abigail in her bittersweet voice. "_see_?"

...

He wakes up and the first thing he registers is the bitter, numbing cold shooting sharp pains up his legs as his feet are buried in the heavy snow. His thoughts are still clouded with images of Abigail, and he feels uneasy, knowing something is wrong. It takes a moment before he comes to the conclusion that he's standing in his front yard. His head is pounding in a headache, and it feels hot again like it had in the hospital, and becomes instantly afraid that its happening again, that he's going to have another seizure, or that he's going to throw up right here in the snow, that his brain is going to explode from all the beating against his skull.

When his body won't let him stand the stabbing cold anymore, he stumbles back up the steps to the house, suddenly remembering that Alana is in there. He prays that she hasn't noticed his absence, that she fell asleep shortly after he did. Or, better yet, she left and he won't have to deal with it at all- but he glances behind him and notices her car still in his driveway. He swears to himself at the sight of it and begins to tremble, to shake, from both the cold and his sudden agitation, and his teeth begin to chatter.

His ears fill with the deafening silence of the night as he walks onto the porch, and every beat of his pounding heart was like a gunshot ringing out in the dead air of the land surrounding his little house. It slams against his chest like an animal caged in his ribs, attempting to rip its way out.

The gust if warmth that greets him when he opens the door he thinks is the greatest thing he's ever felt, but all its comfort fades away when he sees Alana shifting awake at the sound of his entrance, rubbing her eyes and muttering, "Will?"

She sees him with half his legs covered in slimy snow, his whole body trembling in what she assumes to be the cold, teeth chattering and eyes clouded with confusion and disorientation.

"Will, what happened?" She says, rising from her uncomfortable position on the couch and striding across the room to where he stood, unmoving. He sees her slight body coming towards him and all he can see is tears in her skin and antlers running through her. When she reaches him her tone becomes concerned, calm, professional. "Tell me what you did."

He looks at her and suddenly everything in him snaps; his brain and all his bones are made of twigs worn too thin, and they all snap simultaneously, and then it all happens so fast; he lunges for her like a wild animal, is eyes wide and uncontrolled, and she flings herself backward so as to evade his hand, raised in a sharp strike; it comes down just inches from her cheek, and she gasps, more in shock than in fear, but so loud he jumps back, too. Suddenly he comes to his senses, realizing what he was about to do.

His palm never came in contact with her flesh; but heat rises from her left cheek, his designated target, and it burns red hot and angry.

They stand in silence for a few moments, both staring in shock. Will's eyes are wild, Alana's brimming with tears. Her chest aches; his heart catches, as they stare for what seems like ages.

Will lets out a soft whimper and attempts to take a step closer to her, wanting to close the physical and mental void between them- the void full of fear and longing and instability and 'professional curiosity'- but she steps back in perfect time with his forward. "I'm- Alana, I'm so sorry, I-I wouldn't-"

She gives him a dreadfully cold stare and his stomach lurches, tugging in pain. "But apparently you _would_." She says, clutching a hand to her cheek.

For a brief second he considers kissing her again, his lips serving as a distraction from his mind, but he knows he can't make her forget this time. He knows he can't make her stop thinking about everything. She wouldn't be willing, that is.

And then she looks at him with exactly the kind of pity he feared most would emit from her eyes, and she says, "You're sick, Will."

"_Don't_," he moans desperately, shutting his eyes tightly closed. He wants to shield her from the truth, though he can't shield himself from it, though she'd found out long ago, and knew it better than anyone else. But he didn't think he could handle opening his eyes to her reddening cheek and her sad, pitiful eyes.

"_You are_." Alana hisses. "And you need help." The twigs in his heart snap, too.

She wanted anything more than to help him; to find out what the _hell_ was wrong and _fix_ it. But she trusted Hannibal with Will's mind, trusted him enough to know without seeing it that he was making things better, somehow. It could be worse, she supposes. There was no reason for her to interfere, not when Will was in the practiced and capable hands of Hannibal. She'd told him to get those tests done as well, to look over the brain scan again, and she hoped more than anything that answers and solutions would come soon...but right now her mind was spinning and reeling, like the night Will kissed her, but not like that at all.

Anger rises up in Will suddenly, hating himself for ruthlessly destroying everything again, and he takes it out on her. "Why are you here?" He snaps harshly. "Why'd you have to come here, anyway?"

She's taken aback. "I-I told you before, I was concerned about you-"

"You're always concerned about me." He scoffs.

Her eyebrows knit together in fury. "Yeah, and it seems I'm about the only one who does at the moment. Glad to know you appreciate it." The second the words slip out of her mouth she regrets them. She knows it isn't his fault. She knows staying calm when he's so riled up is the best thing to do, but she's confused and exhausted and suddenly angry that she doesn't think she could bring herself to _care_ anymore.

"I also wanted to...thank you. For what you did the other night."

He wants to retort her thanks with an apology for everything, for himself as a whole; wants to say he's sorry that there is no room in the realms of his dark and dangerous skull for her to be a part of his life in the way he wants her to be.

"I think...it would be best if you just...go." His words are slow and lazy, and he keeps his eyes on the floor as he slurs every syllable.

She crosses her arms over her chest, a fierce determination suddenly drawn out of her. "Fine. But not until I know you're going to be okay. Not until I know that _this_-" She gestures down at his wet legs, still shaking. "-isn't going to happen again."

They both know he can't promise that, so he keeps quiet, eyes still lingering on the floor, half wishing she'd just walk out, half wishing she'd stay.

Another silence ensues, drawn out and dreadful, full with all their empty words and mountains of guilt.

Suddenly Gideon's words shouted at Will in his mind: "_Here we both are, looking at her. Those kinds of people who aren't meant to be in a relationship. We're already committed. It's hard to be with another person when you can't get out of your own head."_

Here he was, looking at her again, another thing his psyche prevents him from ever having.

Here he was, so far inside his own head that it felt escape was impossible.

Other things come back to him about that night, too, flashing in blurry images across his mind: Alana rushing out in the snow to get to him, shocked and panicked and yelling for her protective custody to call for help. Alana pulling his head into her lap as they waited in the snow until the flashing lights of the ambulance appeared, Alana insisting to ride in the back of it with him, never leaving his side until she sat by his bedside with her hand clasped in his. With every gauzy memory he becomes buried alive in guilt, suffocating with it.

"I'm sorry," He repeats, and scrambles for more to say, because he knows she's so close to walking out, because she'd been backing away toward the door for awhile now, and confused words tumbled out of his mouth without his brain even stopping to comprehend them: "I'm sorry, Alana, and I wish it wasn't this way, I wish I wasn't this way, and I wish I could stop being selfish. I wish I could stop being selfish and stop wanting you despite everything, despite how bad for both of us it would be, but I can't stop wanting you, and I do, still, even now-"

He stops, not knowing where else to go, what else to say. Staring at her unscatched cheek is just making a crack form in his heart, a thousand what if's whirling like a tornado in his head.

She doesn't look him in the eye. "Well, I don't want you like this." she says quietly. "I'm...I am going to go." She mutters, turning towards the door. She feels drained and empty, and neither of them can stand to look each other in the face.

He wants to stop her. He knows he shouldn't. He keeps his feet planted firmly on the ground, willing them to stay in place. "See you later, Will." She says almost mournfully as she slips back into the night.

After he hears her car back out of his driveway, the gravel dragging against the ground, picks up his mug from the coffee table and flings it across the room in fury. It hits the wall of his kitchen, staining it with dark coffee, shattering it to irreparable pieces. He doesn't bother stopping to sweep them up as he stumbles numbly to bed.

…

Abigail comes to him again in the night and he thinks about the cabin and the antlers reaching out to grab him with their still and vice-like grip. He'll have to go, he thinks. Run with Abigail again, have her climb her prison walls. He has to see the cabin once more, with her there like in the dream. He'll have to find a way to fit the pieces of Abigail and Hannibal and Garrett Jacob Hobbs and the Ripper and the Copycat and the nightmares; he'll have to find a way to make their jagged edges forced to fit, like a demented puzzle.

_It's hard to be with another person when you can't get out of your own head._

Maybe that was the only way out.


End file.
